Dinosaurs are everywhere these days. They are the most popular exhibits in many museums, the stars of movies and the focus of television documentaries, the pitchmen in advertising campaigns and the subject of gushing articles in magazines and newspapers. Looking at how dinosaurs are portrayed in the popular press, it is easy to lump them together with leprechauns, unicorns, and dragons – creatures of myth and iconic lore that only exist in the imaginations of children and the whimsy of pop culture. But dinosaurs are not creatures of fantasy – they were real animals, of many fantastic shapes and sizes, that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for an astounding span of over 160 million years. They were living, breathing, feeding, moving, reproducing, evolving organisms that originated in the
aftermath of the worst mass extinction in earth history, rose to dominance as a supercontinent was splitting and climates were fluctuating, evolved into some of the largest and most fearsome animals the planet has ever seen, and then suddenly went extinct right at the same time that a giant comet or asteroid slammed into the earth and supervolcanoes were belching rivers of lava. And perhaps most astonishing of all, these ancient creatures, so often symbols of lethargy and failure, were the ancestors of one of the most successful groups of living animals: the birds. <...>
